{"product_id":"the-duke-undone-isbn-9780593198285","title":"The Duke Undone","description":"\u003cb\u003eAn artist stumbles upon a naked duke and an unlikely love story begins in this captivating Victorian historical romance.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003eWhen Royal Academy painting student Lucy Coover trips over a naked man passed out in an East End alley, she does the decent thing. She covers him up and fetches help. Trouble is, she can't banish his muscular form from her dreams as easily. Compelled to capture every detail, she creates a stunning portrait but is forced to sell it when the rent comes due. What could be worse than surrendering the very picture of your desire? Meeting the man himself. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Anthony Philby, Duke of Weston, is nobody's muse. Upon discovering the scandalous likeness, he springs into action. His infamous family has been torn apart by shame and secrets, and he can't afford more gossip. Even a whisper may jeopardize his inheritance and his chance at independence. His plan is simple: burn the painting, confront the artist. Or rather, it's simple until he meets Lucy and decides to offer the bewitching young artist a devil's bargain.  He'll help save her foreclosed home, if she'll help repair his family’s brutal legacy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e An irresistible passion ignites between them, but when danger strikes, Lucy and Anthony must risk everything... for a love that might destroy them both.“Lushly dark, riddled with secrets, and seductive….Lowell’s writing oozes a sense of place. [The] sense of authenticity never falters, making this the most Victorian of romance novels.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eEntertainment Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I loved \u003ci\u003eThe Duke Undone\u003c\/i\u003e and so will my readers!”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eEloisa James\u003c\/b\u003e, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebestselling author of \u003ci\u003eMy Last Duchess\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “A beautiful blend of seductive suspense and heart-tugging romance that I could not put down. Romance fans should make room for this author on their keeper shelves!”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eLyssa Kay Adams\u003c\/b\u003e, National bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eCrazy, Stupid Bromance\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Joanna Lowell's skillful storytelling and dazzling characters create one of the most exciting new voices in historical romance today.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eJulia London\u003c\/b\u003e, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebestselling author of \u003ci\u003eA Princess by Christmas\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\"A charming romance with an atypical heroine and a to-die-for (and hot!) hero in this unique tale of a duke and a struggling artist in Victorian London.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eJennifer Ashley\u003c\/b\u003e, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Stolen Mackenzie Bride\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I really loved this book—in fact, I couldn't put it down. It's a fabulous feast of a story that plunges you into the Victorian era with all its levels and complications — into the art world and among aristocrats and slum-dwellers. There's tension, adventure, derring-do, a fight against corruption on several levels, a rich cast of characters and a hero and heroine to admire and cheer for. All in all, a rich and heartwarming historical romance. Highly recommended.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eAnne Gracie\u003c\/b\u003e, National bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eMarry in Scarlet\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003c\/i\u003eLowell conjures vivid characters in this intelligent Victorian romance… provides plenty of atmospheric intrigue, deepened by Lowell’s willingness to engage with ideas of gender, class, and empire, and by the complexity of the characters.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“It’s a lush, sensual and outstanding romance that makes the heart ache in the very best way.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBookPage\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e(Starred Review)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Impeccably researched, Lowell's latest emphasizes justice. This love story tackles weighty issues but remains suspenseful and spellbinding.\"\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e (Starred Review)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Lowell’s prose is vivid and evocative, and issues such as class inequity, women’s rights, and alcohol addiction complement the intense on-page evolution of the love story...those looking for a happy-ever-after for complex and passionate characters will be very satisfied here. A new voice in historical romance that will keep readers riveted.\"\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eJoanna Lowell\u003c\/b\u003e lives among the fig trees in North Carolina, where she teaches in the English department at Wake Forest University. When she's not writing historical romance, she writes collections and novels as Joanna Ruocco. Those books include \u003ci\u003eDan,\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eAnother Governess \/ The Least Blacksmith\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Week\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eField Glass\u003c\/i\u003e, co-authored with Joanna Howard.\u003cp\u003ePROLOGUE\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLondon\u003cbr\u003e October 1881\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e As Lucy Coover turned into the narrow alley, her eye caught the patch of early morning sky peeping out between the tenements. Violet, paling to softest blue. The silver moon still floating above a single rosy cloud. Her fellow students at the Painting School would never believe the slums of Shoreditch could offer such beauty. But how to capture that quality of light? She held up two fingers and focused on the span between. Still gazing upward, she took another step.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSomething beneath her foot \u003ci\u003ecrunched\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNot mud, not refuse.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eDear God\u003c\/i\u003e. There was a \u003ci\u003ehand\u003c\/i\u003e beneath her boot. The hand attached to a wrist, and the wrist to a forearm, the forearm to an elbow, the elbow to an upper arm, shoulder, neck, head.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe had trod on a corpse.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLucy sprang back. The feel of fingers grinding beneath her heel made her stomach plunge. But the corpse didn’t stir.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWell, a corpse wouldn’t.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere he lay, stretched before her. She felt her heart pounding in her ears. She could hear the street sounds and see, between the bowing walls, a sliver of morning life. Omnibuses and donkey carts rolled along, hemmed in by the throngs. Every morning, Lucy hurried past crumbling tenements, crossed through grim, teeming courtyards, and squeezed through this passageway, a shortcut to High Street, where she caught the omnibus to the Royal Academy of Arts. She’d stepped on her share of rotten onions and, once, a rag that squeaked and discharged a rat.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis was something new.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe steeled herself for another glance. \u003ci\u003eAh\u003c\/i\u003e. Poor soul, he’d been deprived of life \u003ci\u003eand\u003c\/i\u003e—she swallowed—every last stitch of clothing. Shoreditch teemed with street toughs, notorious for theft and murder. Knocked him on the head, perhaps, stripped him of coin, cloth, and shoe leather. Dumped him in the passage to rot. Her skin prickled as it turned to gooseflesh. She whirled around, but no one loomed behind her. This had to be the loneliest alley in all of London. She turned back slowly.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHow strange, this feeling that she and the corpse occupied their own little world, a quiet pocket in the clamorous city. The busy street was so close, but the passersby kept their eyes down or fixed straight ahead. For help she would need to send up a cry.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eMurder!\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd yet…her gaze dropped again. The corpse was beginning to strike her as remarkably vital. Surely, murder most foul never left the skin with such a ruddy glow. Or the limbs arranged with such casual, insouciant grace. The morning was uncommonly fine, and the moon still floated directly overhead. Was it her whimsy or did it lend an odd, silvered clarity to the light?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt felt wrong to stare. But she was, after all, \u003ci\u003etrained\u003c\/i\u003e to stare. She lowered her bag to the ground. She drew her brown together and gave the corpse a long and steady look.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e One arm was bent behind his head. The other arm was flung across the broad expanse of his chest. A chest that was, almost imperceptibly, rising and falling.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He lived.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e There was just enough room for her to edge around him. She circled by inches, breath catching as she took in every detail. From head to toe, he was, in a word, magnificent. A figure of geometric perfection. He could easily stand among the statues she’d sketched in the Antique School. Except he wasn’t marble. Wasn’t nearly so smooth, so rounded. Any bust of Achilles would look well with that straight nose and strong chin, those full but starkly shaped lips. But no sculptor would dare carve that jawline. It was too square, too harsh, contours darkened with stubble. The \u003ci\u003emaleness\u003c\/i\u003e overpowered and was completely wrong for classical forms. Old gods and warriors wore thick, curled beards as profuse as a maiden’s locks. The young ones showed sloped cheeks that flirted with girlishness.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e This man was not girlish. No. Not that. She noted the bulge of biceps in his bent arm. The width of the forearm. She moved her eyes over his torso, the masses of muscle well-defined, dusted with more of that utterly unclassical hair, then traced the diagonal lines that ran down from his hip bones.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She looked away, then back at the black curls at the base of that V of muscle. Here, then, was another deviation from the classical precedent.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Canvases and statues had led her to expect something slightly more…cherubic from \u003ci\u003ethat\u003c\/i\u003e part of the anatomy. Obviously, artists upheld a long tradition of minimizing male genitals for the sake of composition. Or decency. Or…Did this particular man exhibit some quirk of proportion?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Her suppressed giggle emerged as a snort. It didn’t matter, of course, the man’s particular quirks, but that he had them at all. That he was \u003ci\u003eparticular\u003c\/i\u003e. Not an abstraction, a mathematical proposition in stone. Those cold, white statues she studied had taught her a little about flesh, the tones and textures, the play of shadow and light, hard and soft. All those hours in the studios of Burlington House trying to work out how the sinews of the human form wrapped the armature of the bones…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She almost clapped her hands. She felt flushed, wild. Here it was, the whole mystery of creation. No wonder women were denied access to life classes, banned from drawing semidraped and undraped figures. It wasn’t because the sight was corrupting. It was because the sight was illuminating.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She leaned closer and caught a whiff of him, caustic enough to cut through the alley’s fug of mud and mildew. She wrinkled her nose.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Spirits were emanating from his very pores. He wasn’t dead; he was dead drunk. Drank himself witless, and some of the local lads had played him for the fool he was. They could have left his \u003ci\u003edrawers\u003c\/i\u003e, for God’s love.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She dropped down into a crouch, dust and straw puffing up around her. She knew it was madness to sit on her heels beside a naked stranger, a sot, full as a tick on forty-rod gin. Drunkards didn’t often emerge from sleep in the sweetest of moods.  \u003cbr\u003e This one was strong. His body showed strength in every line. He might leap up without warning, swinging his fists in a rage.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Her reflexes, though, were lightning quick. She could dodge a groggy blow.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Hullo.” She cleared her throat, sidled closer. “\u003ci\u003eSir\u003c\/i\u003e.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She only meant to rouse him. She wasn’t trying to memorize the balance of his features, the shape of his mouth, the sharp peaks of his upper lip. But somehow time was passing. She could hear the factory whistles sounding and her eyes were still wandering, sliding down to his chest and arms. She’d have to \u003ci\u003erun\u003c\/i\u003e from the omnibus to make her morning lesson.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She rose, crept out onto the street. On the corner, a red-faced bobby was blowing his whistle. She’d bet her right eye the police would give the man a sniff, heave him up on the wagon, and dump him in a jail. The thought disturbed her. She turned away. There, a ragpicker, painfully young, all but hidden by the bag on his back.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She gave him a smile. “What’s your biggest piece of sacking?” The boy sized her up as he dug out a filthy rectangle of cloth. Bigger than a fig leaf, but not by much.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “A shilling,” he pronounced.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She sighed. “Never mind.” She’d sacrifice her shawl. She slipped back into the alley and covered the man’s lower body with odd reluctance. It wasn’t the shawl she regretted. It was losing the sight of him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Back on the street, she found the boy waiting, more of his wares displayed for her on the pavement.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “There’s a man sleeping in that alleyway,” she said. “I’ll give you a tanner to stand right there and keep an eye on him. If he starts to go clue, call a bobby.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The boy snatched the coin and grinned. He was missing both his front teeth. Probably he wouldn’t even wait for her to climb into the omnibus before he trundled off, taking the shawl with him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Don’t go too near,” she added. “He eats little boys.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e And he might, for all she knew. The man had certainly done nothing to deserve her sacrificing a shawl and spending sixpence. \u003ci\u003eAnd\u003c\/i\u003e, at this rate, missing her morning lesson.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Nonetheless, she felt protective of him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She had to force herself to walk away.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e On her way home, she took the same shortcut and hardly knew if she was happy or sad that the man was gone.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Later that evening, she found herself hunched over her sketchbook, staring at the blank page. When she shut her eyes, she could see him perfectly, see his contours and the dynamic tension latent in his resting muscles.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She inched her fingers up the pencil, hesitated. The man was someone’s son. Brother. Husband. She had no right to reproduce his likeness at a whim.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But the image was there, on the insides of her eyelids.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The seeing was a king of feeling. She was feeling her way toward something extraordinary. She could capture it, his beauty. The heat of his slumberous, living flesh.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e All alone in her little room, her great-aunt Marian asleep downstairs in the dress shop, and just overhead, hidden by the slant of the roof and by the clouds, the moon, a secret accomplice, she could put down a line, and then another, and another.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The image was there, with her in the darkness. Not that man’s body anymore, but her own vision. \u003ci\u003eHers\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She blinked her eyes open.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She pressed her pencil lead to the page.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Berkley","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301552410853,"sku":"NP9780593198285","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780593198285.jpg?v=1767739102","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-duke-undone-isbn-9780593198285","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}